Layoffs are hitting the editorial staff at The Village Voice today, and they’re hitting some of the most widely-read staff writers in the office. The Observer has heard from multiple sources familiar with the situation that the bad news is beginning to spread around the office, and that the following people are out at the Voice:
Camille Dodero (Staff Writer), Steven Thrasher (Staff Writer) and Victoria Bekiempis (Staff Writer), and we also heard Araceli Cruz was cut to part-time status. Cruz, who has been with the Voice since 2007, is a senior associate editor who works on both event listings and features across the paper.
Dodero originally joined the Voice as the alt-weekly’s web editor in 2007, arriving from the Boston Phoenix (her last title at the paper was as a staff writer). Over the last few years, she’s been responsible for a fair share of memorable features that have put the paper in a national spotlight, including (but by no means limited to) one of the first on-the-ground in-depth looks at the Insane Clown Posse’s Gathering of the Juggalos (after which, doing so became a yearly tradition for many a media outlet) and a recent series about an amateur ambush-porn entrepreneur.
Thrasher’s been with the Voice since 2009, and was recently named the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association Journalist of the Year, 2012. Thrasher’s coverage of metro civic stories and LGBT local and national issues (see: Bad Lieutenant, Dan Choi, ‘Maybe I Do, Maybe I Don’t’) have earned him a wide haul of accolades.
Bekiempis has been writing on the Voice’s news blog, Runnin’ Scared, for six months; she’s been with the company in one capacity or another for two and a half years. She relocated to New York after working at Village Voice Media’s sister publication, the Broward-Palm Beach New Times, since May 2011.
When reached by phone, Village Voice editor-in-chief Tony Ortega declined to comment, noting the layoffs as a “personnel matter.”
We’ve also heard further rumblings of budget cuts and a pending office move out of the Village Voice building. If you know any more, we’re listening.
fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek